The latest skit, called “Flower and the Kingdom of Fort Lauderjail,” by the Autonomous Playhouse, an activist puppet collective, lampoons Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jack Seiler over city policies targeting the homeless. The video, posted on YouTube, features a traveling thespian named Flower who is arrested with other homeless puppets and sent to a dungeon for aggressive panhandling in Stranahan park, a real-life public park in the heart of downtown Fort Lauderdale.

A-Mafia performs for a video shoot in Queens for his song “CEO Music.”. A-Mafia, the Harlem rapper, took the wheel of a cherry red 1970 Chevelle SS and headed down Jamaica Avenue in Queens. The Chevy’s owner gave chase in a SUV with a sunroof, through which a music video director popped up to shoot footage of A-Mafia driving.

Two soldiers wearing dark green camouflage full combat fatigues, black boots and yellow, blue and red flag insignia on the shoulders walked into the Colombian consulate in Midtown Manhattan recently. Sergeant Tovar of the Colombian Army was at the consulate to run a personal errand, he said, and would soon return to Stratford, Connecticut, with his fellow soldier, where in the next few weeks they will finish test flying Black Hawk helicopters recently acquired from the U.S. government.

Rich, a Christmas tree vendor, smokes a hand-rolled cigarette. Rich wakes up at 10 p.m., steps out of his white van and takes charge of the Christmas tree stand so that his partner, Bekha, can take her turn sleeping in the Ford for six hours. The duo began camping out at West 145th Street and Broadway in Hamilton Heights on November 18 and will stay until December 25.

Madlyn Stokely, shown with her daughter Rochelle Hill, lives on West 123rd Street in the brownstone where her mother, activist Hilda Stokely, lived. When Hilda Stokely decided her son should have skis, nothing got in her way. She went out and bought a pair, but she didn’t send him to Aspen or Vail.

Joanna Hadjiyanis pays for hurricane supplies at Fairway Market in Harlem. Northern Manhattan bodegas and supermarkets had no trouble selling bottled water and batteries as winds picked up this afternoon and city officials issued evacuation orders for low-lying areas before Hurricane Sandy makes landfall tomorrow.

Police and fire department officials allow residents back into their building after a partial floor collapse occurred on the second floor. Amado Adames had just stepped into his bathroom in Hamilton Heights yesterday when the floor collapsed and fell through to the apartment below it. Adames, 58, was seriously hurt, according to officials.

The Craig Harris band plays for supporters at the “Save the Fire Watchtower” event in Harlem’s Marcus Garvey Park. The 155 year old cast-iron structure needs major repairs. A four-story cast-iron watchtower sits crumbling atop the hill in Harlem’s Marcus Garvey Park, fenced off and too dangerous for the public to visit, a relic of a firefighting system long obsolete.

Lucy Pagoada addresses antiwar protesters at the State Building in central Harlem on Sunday. A small cluster of protestors gathered in central Harlem Sunday to mark the 11th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan, the longest in American history. “We’re here today to give voice to our opposition to the wars abroad and the wars here at home,” said Nellie Bailey, of the United National Antiwar Coalition.